A normal user's look into the world of 3D Stereo Technologies

Following up on the story about the Roxio Cineplayer BD With 3D not being available anymore and the fact that there remain only three software Blu-ray 3D-capable players I’ve decided to check the current situation with them as well. I often get questions if somebody would be able to watch 3D movies on his old PC or laptop on a new 3D HDTV, something that seems easy at first, but things may get problematic depending on what is the video card in the system. The problem is that not all software Blu-ray 3D players support every popular 3D output mode and not output modes are available for all output formats.

Below you can find the requirements for playback of 3D videos on HDMI 1.4 3D HDTVs with the different solutions for playing back Blu-ray 3D movies, these are as per the website of the software developers requirements and specifications published on their websites… and they are not that clear.

So if you have a system with these specifications as a minimum (the specific GPU depending on the manufacturer), in theory you should not have trouble playing Blu-ray 3D movies on a 3D-capable HDTV using HDMI 1.4 frame packaging. These software solutions of course also support Nvidia 3D Vision, 3D DLP Checkerboard and Row Interleaved (passive 3D), Anaglyph and maybe a few extra ones and with them things are generally easier to setup and they simply work. The real problem is making things work using HDMI 1.4 frame packaging and it might turn to be more problematic, in my experience, to make an integrated Intel GPU work, so as a good advice I’d recommend to download the trial version of the three software Blu-ray 3D players mentioned above and try them all on your PC before deciding which one you should buy. This can save you a lot of trouble in actually making thing work as you want them to and not having to rely only on some requirements listed by the software developer as practice tends to show that these not always turn out to be true or things simply don’t work as you expect them to. Also, another good advice is to always use the latest official video drivers and to have all the updates for the player software as these do help in resolving some issues, although in some rare occasions they also might break compatibility.

There have been only four software Blu-ray 3D players for PC available allowing you to play Blu-ray 3D movies on your computer running Windows operating system – Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre, Corel WinDVD, Cyberlink PowerDVD and Roxio CinePlayer BD. But now it seems that Roxio CinePlayer BD with 3D is gone for good and it has been “replaced” with Roxio CinePlayer with 3D as if the Blu-ray 3D-capable software never existed. If you are wondering what is the reason for that, well it is most likely due to the fact that Corel bought the Roxio product line earlier this year and they have probably decided to kill the Roxio CinePlayer with 3D software in favor of their Corel WinDVD Pro 11 solution that plays back Blu-ray 3D movies…

So a the moment you only get to choose between three different software solutions if you want to be able to play back Blu-ray 3D movies on your computer and these are: Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 5, Corel WinDVD 11 Pro or Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 Pro/Ultra. If I have to rate those three personally I’d go first with Cyberlink PowerDVD 12, then Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 5 and the third one would be Corel WinDVD 11 Pro. Which one of these are you using and is there someone still with Roxio CinePlayer BD with 3D that is not very happy with Corel practically getting rid of that product after acquiring the Roxio product line?

CyberLink has released the new version 12 of their PowerDVD video player software that also supports the playback of 3D videos and Blu-ray 3D movies. The new version 12 comes with some improvements and new features part of which are related to the stereoscopic 3D support that the software offers. PowerDVD 12 finally comes with support for converting normal 2D Blu-ray movies into stereoscopic 3D format in real time, so you may be able to enjoy some of your favorite 2D movies autoconverted in 3D format (if you are a fan of autoconversion to 3D). PowerDVD 12 also comes with support for 3D videos using the MK3D video format (file container). The new version also lets you choose your preferred 3D viewing method for viewing YouTube 3D videos, and you can also playback 2D videos from YouTube converted in stereo 3D format, using the TrueTheater 3D autoconversion feature of the software.

One more important change with the new PowerDVD 12 software is the stereo 3D support also becoming available to a Pro version of the player and not only available anymore in the Ultra version. The PowerDVD 12 Pro and Ultra pretty much offer the same set of stereoscopic 3D features, although the Ultra version still has some more extra features. Just a reminder that the Standard version of PowerDVD 12 does not have support for any of the 3D-related capabilities of the product and you will not be able to play stereo 3D content with it. PowerDVD 12 Ultra is available with a price of $99.95 USD and the PowerDVD 12 Pro is available for $79.9 USD, and upgrades from previous PowerDVD versions are available starting at $44.95 USD. Not that much reason to upgrade if you already have PowerDVD 10 or 11 Ultra and use it mainly for the playback of Bly-ray 3D or other 3D videos as the the focus this time seems to be placed mostly on extending the autoconversion from 2D to 3D. There is also a trial version available of the player that you can download and try the new features of PowerDVD 12.